The Consul's File

By Paul Theroux

Book Overview

Award-winning writer Paul Theroux takes us on a journey through small town Malaysia through the eyes of the exuberant Spencer Savage in his breathtaking novel The Consul's File. Spencer Savage a young... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0395253993
• ISBN13: 9780395253991
• Release Date: January 1977
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 209 Pages
• Weight: 0.83 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A must-read book about Malaysia in the 1970s

Paul Theroux (PT) wrote or at least researched this novel/collection of interlinked short stories during his three-year stint as a lecturer at the University of Singapore. Saint Jack was another product of this period. Many of the chapters in this collection were first published as short stories in more or less distinguished periodicals. Spencer Savage (SS), a young diplomat is tasked with closing down a remote US consulate in Malaysia. Long ago it was opened to serve America's rubber interests. Since then chemical technology has improved on natural rubber and rubber trees are cut down to make way for oil palm plantations. The US has no stake in palm oil production, so... SS gradually becomes enthralled by the people he lives among, Malays, Indians, Chinese, left-over or consultant British, even the newly-confident Japanese, selling transistor radios to the Malaysians. His adventures, observations and personal views are summarized in 20 brief chapters, which provide a broad and amazingly varied perspective on multi-ethnic co-existence in a Malaysian backwater town in the 1970's. Everything is good, the plots of the stories, the dialogues, the background and the acute observations and perceptions about the past, present and future. The consul is mostly a fly on the wall, whilst the epicentre of much of what happens is the Club, a fixture of all of Britain's ex-colonies. Malaysia's colonial life was immortalised by Anthony Burgess. PT does the same for post-colonial Malaysia in this book full of amazing stories. Required reading for people who have visited Malaysia or are intending to. It should be reprinted. Many people will enjoy it. And SS will reappear in PT's The London Embassy, published in 1983.

Twenty Short Stories from Malaysia

In this 1978 compilation, Paul Theroux offers twenty stand-alone (and originally serialized) chapters told through the eyes of a young American consul posted to a small Malaysian town in the 1970s. The stories are chronological picking up when the narrator arrives in country and ending with a letter he writes as he departs. The expatriate society, with its clubby Brits, drunken eccentrics, casual racism, missionaries, and scoffing credulity of local beliefs will be recognizable to readers of Graham Greene, John LeCarre, and Joseph Conrad, but Theroux's descriptions are typically evocative: characters draw themselves (among the most memorable are the chameleon novelist in "The Coconut Gatherer", the Japanese tennis player in "The Tennis Court, and the medicine man in "The Tiger's Suit"). The tropical air provides a uniform backdrop of heat, jungle smells, and exotic strangenes. The narrator neither condescends to the locals nor judges the expatriates, he merely observes in a dry prose that can sometimes be the most powerful criticism of all. Finally, in the last chapter's private letter (perhaps the book's strongest pages) he comments at length on Squibb, the club bore, "He had failed at being a person, so he tried to succeed at being a character". Squibb is not alone.Theroux, perhaps best known for "The Mosquito Coast" and a host of wonderful travel journals, displays in these early stories a sincere voice, non-judgmental and full of wonder at seeing the new and exotic. "The Consul's File" is short and insightful. Worthwhile.

The best book about Foreign Service life

Theroux's Consul's File is perhaps the most evocative book about what its really like to be in the foreign service. The episodic nature of the story matches the life and work, even at larger posts. The sequel "London Embassy", does not work quite as well, but is still worthwhile.

enjoyable short stories

This is actually a series of short stories, all told from the point of view of a consul in a medium-sized city, in 1970s Malaysia. The stories are witty and imaginative. I read the book whilst travelling through Malaysia, anyone who has spend time in the tropics can relate to these enjoyable tales.